Hey guys, your B-show B&Wer is back! Quick recap of last week’s Main Event — uhhh, I dunno? Maybe Slater Gator did something? That seems likely, right?
Pre-show Notes:
– Let the spirit of Christmas Bounty fill your heart and be generous with your shares. This special time comes but once per week!
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Hit the next page for your Main Event of the evening (er, afternoon)…
A Note Before We Begin: The central irony of this show is that they call it Main Event despite the fact that the show is obviously the modern incarnation of Jakked. So, just to add a little extra interest to these reports, I thought I’d keep track of how close all the matches on the show, combined, come to equalling one legit main event. You’ll see how it works as we progress.
Best: No, That Was Skill
WWE so rarely exploits their characters or ideas to their fullest potential, so I was shocked and delighted to see WWE actually take the next logical step with Damien Mizdow and have him stunt-host Miz TV. I mean, if there’s one place Miz actually needs a stunt double it’s on Miz TV, seeing as how 90% of them end in the guy being horribly maimed. Hopefully this is all leading of a vignette in which a lingerie-clad Maryse walks into the bedroom only to find Damien Sandow there studiously looking over a script that’s just three pages of stick-figure sexual diagrams.
So yeah, I was sold on this segment the moment one, and Sandow did not disappoint, promising a monologue inspired by the movie Christmas Bounty (starring The Miz).
Sadly before Sandow could get going, Dolph Ziggler came out. Ugh, but surprisingly, the segment didn’t immediately devolve into hot trash. Ziggler and Sandow got into it with a spirited really-off (“Miz doe–I mean, I don’t say that any more!”) then shit got real as Sandow revealed he’s a performance artist — one years ahead of time no less! He then hinted at a plan to worm his way into the IC title scene (a desperate, stupid plan, but it’s something) and you could almost see some of the old Damien Sandow peeking through the layers of sadness. It was a surprisingly real grace note to a segment that kicked off with monologues inspired by Christmas Bounty delivered by a guy wearing The Miz’s borrowed underpants. Hell, even Ziggler didn’t come off that grating, since nobody’s more deserving of a bit of snark than 2014 Damien Sandow.
Best: The Best Damien Sandow Match in a Long Time
Then Sandow and Ziggler had a match, and it was good. Really good! Maybe Sandow’s best since he was holding the Money in the Bank briefcase, or at the very least since Ziggler was pinning him with a drum on his head.
At first I was mostly into it for the Sandow goofiness, like the bit where he declares some botched neckbreaker/slam thing AWESOME, but it eventually developed into a real match with an actual storyline. When doing his own moves Sandow was doing well, but when he tried to ape Miz’s moveset (including his patented tortured set-up for the figure-four) he quickly found himself down for the three, because it’s better to be yourself, you see. Will this actually lead anywhere? Ha ha, no, of course not, but hey, catching little unexpected bits of great Damien Sandow character work is why the Main Event and Smackdown reports exist.
Main Event Status: Does Damien Mizdow count as one full Miz for the purposes of Main Event calculations? I’m going to say he does. 25%.
Best: SummerLay!!!
Summer’s now over yet!
Awwww.
D’awwwwww.
Keep smiling Nattie. Keep smiling so they can’t see your pain.
Worst: The Longest Rosa Mendes Match, uh, Ever?
Ay papi, what the hell happened to Rosa Mendes? She’s got the legs of a 60-year-old on the bottom, giant mom boobs on the top and she moves around with the grace and confidence of 2014 Hulk Hogan. She looks unhealthy — I’m afraid every move is going to break her. This is what I imagine Ashley Massaro looks like now. Wait, [squints]…is that Ashley Massaro?
Anyways, yeah, this match went for five minutes and Rosa was in there for most of them. Five minutes. Felt like 30. You can see the wheels turning in Rosa’s head between every…single…move — what do I do now? Oh God, oh God, now what? She can’t even steal a tag properly. Rosa reaches out to blind tag Natalya who’s literally a foot away, somehow misses her twice, gets in anyway, then immediately grabs Nattie by the shoulder, reversing the tag, and everyone is just “whatever, try to walk two steps in that direction so Layla can kick you and end this farce”.
Main Event Status: Well, Rosa did wear a raincoat covered in pink flames to the ring, sooooo, this still gets nothing, but at least I’m not doing negative points.
Best: Dust Bros. vs. Los Matadores
The Dusts vs. Matadores was a solid tag match, but the most remarkable thing this segment was the surprisingly competent commentary. Byron Saxton actually made some good points about the Rhodes heel turn (you call them bizarre a dozen times per match, so why do you expect them to follow the rules?) and instead of just aw c’mon-ing him to death, Cole actually admitted it made sense. Cole also, in the clearest terms I’ve heard expressed on WWE TV in a long time, explained the benefit of winning a championship in the company. Now try doing this all the time, guys.
Back to the match, it started out a bit slow, with Lost Matadores in chops and headlocks mode and the audience not really getting the Dusts are supposed to be bad guys now, but it picked up nicely towards the end. I’m definitely a fan of angry Goldust — like a mini painted Mark Henry he is.
Main Event Status: I don’t want angry Goldust to bark something at me, so I’ll go higher than I really should and give this a 20%.
Final Main Event Tally: The matches themselves don’t add up to much, but the Miz TV segment was better than every good thing on Raw combined, so this episode gets a hearty bonus. This was a solid 75% show. Jesus, that Rosa match.
